In light of the current doom and gloom here (not wholly...

In light of the current doom and gloom here (not wholly unwarranted I must say) as the EMH share price plummets, I thought I would provide
some further analysis of hard rock lithium projects, this time comparing the Finnish lithium project, Keliber with Cinovec.

Keliber will be the first integrated battery metals project in Europe. It's phase two development which includes construction of a concentrator and development of the open pit mine was approved by the Sibanye Stillwaters board last October. Equity funding for the project has already been secured and completed (the total estimated project capital of 588million euros was approved in November 2022) while the debt funding is in progress.
The Keliber lithium project DFS forecast a 20% post tax IRR and post tax NPV of 887million euros (real 2022 terms) assuming an 8% discount rate and an average long-term LioH price of $26,034/tonne. The project is to deliver 15000 t.p.a integrated LioH for 16years (calculated mine life). The estimated project capital has now been revised upward to 656 million euros initial capex plus 138 million euros sustaining capex (total 794million capex). The average estimated operating cost is 6,751euros/t LioH.

By comparison Cinovec boasting a massive 7.39 Mt LCE and mine life of 25 years based on only 13% of measured and indicated resource and 7.7% of total resource is expected to produce $29,386 t.p.a LioH and has a NPV of $1.94 billion based on $17000/t battery grade LioH price and estimated IRR of 36.3%. The RFC Ambrian analysis shows that Keliber and Cinovec have very similar Capex (about US$800million) and operating costs although the average operating costs for Keliber estimated at about 6,350 euros/t. LioH have now been revised up to 6,751 euros/t. LioH and the costs for Cinovec do not seem to include the tin credits.
One major differentiating feature is the capital intensity. RFC Ambrian note that mining companies typically show the initial capex relative to the headline annual lithium production for capital intensity. However this can be misleading when looking at the project as a whole. Accordingly, in Fig 14 of their report they have shown capital intensity on the basis of LoM capex relative to the annual production over the LoM and this shows Keliber's capital intensity to be about twice that of Cinovec, US$60,000/t LCE/annum compared to about US$30,000/t LCE/annum for Cinovec.
In my opinion, even if the our DFS figures are less impressive than the current figures would indicate it is hard to conceive that they will be so bad that the Cinovec project will be a less compelling economic proposition than the Kelliber one, especially when one considers that it will be able to produce high grade battery lithium for the next century.